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Tonight, a show called “Weed Wars” is premiering on the Discovery Channel, and it’s entirely based on the Bay Area medical marijuana trade. The premiere has interesting timing: Yesterday, a U.S. District judge in Oakland rejected a request from dispensaries to keep federal prosecutors from filing charges against them. It’s the latest in a series of events that have been challenging California marijuana advocates, kicked off by Melinda Haag, the U.S. Attorney for California’s Northern District, when she announced in early October that the Justice Department is targeting certain cannabis dispensaries for closure.

MELINDA HAAG: Last week we sent letters to landowners and lien holders of these stores, putting them on notice that marijuana is being sold and used on their property in close proximity to children and that the operations must cease.

KALW’s Ben Trefny asked reporter Steven Short to catch us up on the state of medical marijuana in California.

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BEN TREFNY: Steven, we just heard Melinda Haag, the U.S. Attorney for Northern California, saying they’re only targeting cannabis dispensaries near schools. So why do advocates see this as an attack on medical marijuana as a whole?

STEVEN SHORT: All of these dispensaries have been licensed by cities or counties, so they see this as unfairly changing the rules. They also see it as eroding the respectability medical marijuana has earned in the past few years.

For the Justice Department to label what dispensaries consider “medicine” as something that shouldn’t be near schools implies that it’s dangerous. But Haag did say at her press conference back in October that, medical value or not, the whole idea has gotten out of hand:

MELINDA HAAG: The California Compassionate Use Act was intended to help seriously ill people. But the law has been hijacked by profiteers who are motivated, not by compassion, but by money.

TREFNY: Steven, what do dispensary owners say about these accusations?

SHORT: Dispensary owners, and their supporters who I spoke with, stressed that they are non-profit co-ops, not money-grubbing drug dealers. They get their licenses and pay their taxes, just like any other business.

TREFNY: Well, taking that thought at face value, any idea what those taxes and fees amount to?

SHORT: Well, as with everything else associated with this issue, exact numbers are hard to find. But the California Board of Equalization has estimated that medical marijuana generates between $53 million and $104 million in annual sales taxes. That’s a big range, but either number is impressive.

TREFNY: Wasn’t the Justice Department supposed to make marijuana enforcement a lower priority under President Obama?

SHORT: When he was running for president, a lot of people did interpret his remarks that way. Here’s candidate Obama in April of ‘08 in an interview with the Mail-Tribune newspaper in Medford, Oregon:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue simply because I want folks to be investigating violent crimes and potential terrorism. We’ve got a lot of things for our law enforcement officers to deal with.

TREFNY: Steven, what we just heard Barack Obama say seems in conflict with what the Justice Department has announced.

SHORT: Yes, in fact, in the early days of his administration, President Obama specifically said that licensed dispensaries in states with medical marijuana laws would be left alone.

I spoke with Robert MacCoun about this. He’s a UC Berkeley professor, at the Goldman School of Public Policy. Here’s what he said about this seeming contradictions.

ROBERT MacCOUN: While they don’t think medical marijuana patients should be a high priority for prosecution, trafficking in marijuana, or profiteering from medical marijuana, is still on the table as a legitimate use of their resources. And they make quite clear that they’re going to reserve the right to be tough.

TREFNY: How are medical marijuana advocates responding to these letters from the Justice Department that are telling them to shut their doors?

SHORT: The letters actually went to the property owners. They alerted them of possible illegal activity on their property and gave them 45 days to evict the tenants or face seizure of their property, along with possible felony charges themselves. That 45-day period ended last week. Some co-ops have closed, others have moved.

TREFNY: And I imagine that others are taking other action. What else is happening from their end?

SHORT: You won’t be surprised to hear that two lawsuits have been filed. The one prepared by Americans for Safe Access charges that the federal government’s actions are unconstitutional, since the state should be able to set its own health policy. The other one, filed by a group of patients, landlords, and co-ops, charged that the Justice Department is breaking their previous pledge to leave them alone. But earlier this week a U.S. District Judge in Oakland rejected that request.

TREFNY: Why do you think the Justice Department has decided to take these actions at this particular time?

SHORT: I asked Professor MacCoun that same thing and here’s what he had to say:

MacCOUN: You know, I think every four years we enter a presidential “silly season,” where candidates make pronouncements about law and order that are ill-considered. And they’re gambling that it will play well with the electorate. But it’s usually not a good time to discuss rational drug policy. And I think President Obama does not want to be accused of being soft on drugs.

TREFNY: Wasn’t this all supposed to be settled when medical marijuana was first approved by voters?

SHORT: Well, yes and no. Prop 215 has been law since 1996, and it allows licensed patients to possess marijuana. But it says nothing about how they’re supposed to acquire it. That’s part of the problem – along with the fact that “all things marijuana” carry federal felony charges.

I think this is why Justice is saying they’re not going after sick people: They’re going after illegal activities associated with medical marijuana. Their gripe is that not all of the product is getting to patients – a lot of it is getting to the recreational market.

TREFNY: So, looking forward to 2012, what’s on the horizon for medical marijuana?

SHORT: Just a couple of weeks ago, a new voter initiative to reduce penalties concerning marijuana was certified to begin collecting signatures, to put it on the ballot. A couple of similar, but different, initiatives are also in the works, so we may have another one of those multiple choice ballots to deal with about a year from now.

TREFNY: But wouldn’t any new state law, voter or legislature approved, conflict with federal law also?

SHORT: Well, again, it depends. Marijuana is classified as a Schedule One drug, like heroin, making it totally illegal on the federal level. But 16 states and the District of Columbia have some type of legality applying to marijuana. So if the states do it right, they may not get in trouble – or so they hope.

Where do you stand on the medical marijuana debate? Let us know on our Facebook page.

As we watch social unrest spread around the Bay Area, we remember San Francisco in the 1960s. It was a melting pot of ideas, in politics, lifestyle choices, and in music.

This was especially true for Latin musicians. It was a mix of rhythms and styles coming together … a whole generation of artists drew upon that energy.

JOHN SANTOS: We were arrested in Dolores Park, for playing. Because, supposedly, we were breaking the law, playing over the decibel limit of a statute in the city of San Francisco.

Local musician John Santos is just one of the artists featured in an exhibit at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library called “American Sabor.” In Spanish, “sabor” means “flavor,” and it equally describes good food as it does good music. The exhibit, which traveled here from the Smithsonian Institution, highlights artists ranging from Joan Baez and Santana to Ruben Blades and Selena – all American artists who have tapped into their Latin roots to influence popular music across the U.S.

KALW’s Steven Short recently stopped, looked and listened to the exhibit. He picks up the story from here.

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STEVEN SHORT: Before Carlos Santana was “Santana”, he explored the spicy musical stew called “Latin music” to create his own electrifying sound.

CARLOS SANTANA: See, I used to go to picnics in San Jose even before that, and there’d be, like, three bands. There’d be Latin, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Afro-Cuban music like Cal Tjader, or Mongo Santamaria, or Lowen Malone. And there’d be mariachi music, and there’d be a blues band.

And so I would walk away, and I could hear all three of them at the same time. And I said, “That’s the sound that I want to get. I want to incorporate all of this music and make it all one.”

And, as the “American Sabor” exhibit shows, Santana is one in a long line of musicians blending Latin styles to perfect or create distinctly new American styles. For example, the dance orchestras of New York perfected mambo from Cuban roots. And mambo has no stylistic connection to the Tejano Country style of performers such as Freddie Fender – yet, both are clearly Latin-flavored.

San Francisco City Librarian Luis Herrera probably heard Freddie Fender as a boy in Texas in the ‘70s. But the Latin-influenced rock that stuck in his mind wasn’t from Texas. It was coming from the Bay Area.

LUIS HERRERA: Obviously I’m Latino, so I’m very proud of that, and the fact that the music is part of who we are as a people. And so growing up I listened to Malo, and Tower of Power, and all of those actually have ties to the Bay Area.

Librarian Herrera appreciates that this exhibit is bilingual, and that it features visual aspects of the scene.

HERRERA: For example album covers, photographs, covers from 1940s all the way to the present time.

But the important part is the music, which visitors can hear at listening stations. He also points out how appropriate it is for this show to be at the library, because libraries are about story telling.

HERRERA: And certainly music is one way – the oral tradition combined with the written word – is in fact about storytelling. So we’re thrilled about it, particularly the contribution that San Francisco made through Latin performers in American popular music.

There are five sections to the exhibit, one for each of the communities represented: San Antonio, New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. You’re likely to recognize names of performers in each section. And you’re just as likely to want to dance when you hear the music on the jukebox. Go ahead! This is one time you don’t have to be quiet at the library. It just adds to the flavor.

At the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library, I’m Steven Short for Crosscurrents.

This is the last weekend you can catch the “American Sabor” exhibit at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library.

For everyone alive, there is one great equalizer, one experience that doesn’t discriminate based on race, class, religion, or nationality. We all, at some point, must die.

Of course, the way each of us is remembered after we pass varies greatly. Today, many traditions insist on burial within three days of the death. But back in the olden days, the process of mourning could go on for weeks, especially for nobility. This was the case with the Duke of Burgundy, France, who died in 1404. Six weeks elapsed between his death and his burial, and his tomb took another six years to complete.

Important statuettes from that tomb are currently on display in San Francisco at the Legion of Honor. Known as “The Mourners,” this is the first time this group of delicate alabaster carvings has ever left Dijon, France as a group – and they’re not likely to travel ever again. KALW’s Steven Short spoke with the curators of the exhibit and brings us this report.

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STEVEN SHORT: When you think of the Middle Ages, perhaps images of disease, pestilence and mud come to mind. But let’s go back to the late Middle Ages, to France, just before the Renaissance.

Sophie Jugie is the director of the Musee de Beaux Arts in Dijon, France. She says that common perception of the era troubles her, because it doesn’t show the whole picture.

SOPHIE JUGIE: For a part, your vision is true. Of course, it’s difficult in troubled times, but I think that even in the darkest moment, human people always need art. You always have sublime things.

One group of such “sublime things” is the statues that were commissioned by the Dukes of Burgundy for their tombs. Now considered a French national treasure, they have traveled under Sophie Jugie’s care to the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco while the Musee de Beaux Arts is being renovated. This is the first time these statues travel out of France as a group, and it’ll likely be the last.

Their symbolic significance may be monumental, but each of these artful masterpieces could fit in the palm of your hand.

LYN ORR: They’re about 16 inches tall, and at first you think, “Oh, they’re very small,” but within just a few minutes the monumentality of them begin to take over and you don’t worry that they’re small anymore.

Lyn Orr is curator in charge of European Art for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Her first glimpse of these little statutes – 37 in all, each one individually carved – gave her the impression that they might be larger, because of the way she first caught sight of them.

ORR: When I was a young art history student, I discovered the mourning figures from the tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy in Art 1! And a slide, an image, was thrown up on the screen, and I was just entranced by the sense of poignant emotion that these small figures of mourning represent.

While it was love at first sight for the workmanship involved, Orr never dreamed she would have the opportunity to actually show them some day…

ORR: Because these are part of the most important monuments of late-Medieval art, and royal patronage. So they would not be allowed to travel, except for this one instance.

SHORT: I guess it would be like sending, I don’t know, Washington’s tomb across somewhere. You just don’t do that!

ORR: Or the sculpture of, you know, Lincoln, out of the Lincoln Memorial. They are such precious national treasures, in France. And because, even though they’re stone, they’re quite fragile.

And just as people visit the Lincoln Memorial to see the Lincoln statue, visitors to the tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy go to see these symbolic alabaster figures. They represent an eternal funeral procession. The bishop is at the head, followed by choirboys and monks, and then regular mourners. Some hide their faces; others carry beads or dry their tears. Each one has its own gestures and its own facial expression.

Orr learned in that first art class of hers that the exceptional detail of the figures represents some of the most strikingly original artwork of the early 1400s.

ORR: The Dukes of Burgundy rivaled their relatives, the Kings of France, in their ostentatious patronage of art. And some of the premier objects – illuminated manuscripts, beautiful paintings, carvings – come from the patronage of the Dukes of Burgundy. They really were the richest region in France at the time.

This art patronage extended to their memorials. They commissioned the best craftspeople of the era to construct their tombs – patronage, that in its way, helped the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

Visitors to this exhibit join the select few who get to intimately experience the delicate workmanship on display – workmanship that underlines the need for creative expression, even in the darkest of days.

In San Francisco, I’m Steven Short for Crosscurrents.

The Mourners: Tomb Sculpture from the Court of Burgundy will be on view at the Legion of Honor until the end of this year. Find extensive historical context, along with 360-degree views of each sculpture, here.